"Why is it possible for people to stay so woefully ignorant and yet reasonably happy in modern society when so much knowledge is unavailable to them?"

"I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did,"
lamented original moonwalker Neil Armstrong, who passed away at the age of 82 last week. Implicit to his lament is the rather unsettling question of why -- what is it that has held mankind back?

We are all saddened when we look at the world and see what few accomplishments we have made, compared to what we feel are the potentialities of human
beings. People in the past, in the nightmare of their times, had dreams for the future. And now that the future has materialized we see that in many
ways the dreams have been surpassed, but in still more ways many of our dreams of today are very much the dreams of people of the past.

He attributes much of this disconnect to a profound lack of mainstream understanding of and enthusiasm for science, making a case for the wonder of science:

... people -- I mean the average person, the great majority of people, the enormous majority of people -- are woefully, pitifully, absolutely ignorant of
the science of the world that they live in, and they can stay that way ... And an interesting question of the relation of science to modern society is
just that -- why is it possible for people to stay so woefully ignorant and yet reasonably happy in modern society when so much knowledge is unavailable
to them?

Incidentally, about knowledge and wonder, Mr. Bernardini* said we shouldn't teach wonders but knowledge.

It may be a difference in the meaning of the words. I think we should teach them wonders and that the purpose of knowledge is to appreciate wonders
even more. And that the knowledge is just to put into correct framework the wonder that nature is.

He goes on to take a jab at just how unscientific pop culture is -- and how culturally condoned certain unscientific beliefs are:

... as I'd like to show Galileo our world, I must show him something with a great deal of shame. If we look away from the science and look at the world
around us, we find out something rather pitiful: that the environment that we live in is so actively, intensely unscientific. Galileo could say: 'I
noticed that Jupiter was a ball with moons and not a god in the sky. Tell me, what happened to the astrologers?' Well, they print their results in the
newspapers, in the United States at least, in every daily paper every day. Why do we still have astrologers?

[...]

I believe that we must attack these things in which we do not believe. Not attack by the method of cutting off the heads of the people, but attack in
the sense of discuss. I believe that we should demand that people try in their own minds to obtain for themselves a more consistent picture of their
own world; that they not permit themselves the luxury of having their brain cut in four pieces or two pieces even, and on one side they believe this
and on the other side they believe that, but never try to compare the two points of view. Because we have learned that, by trying to put the points of
view that we have in our head together and comparing one to the other, we make some progress in understanding and in appreciating where we are and what
we are. And I believe that science has remained irrelevant because we wait until somebody asks us questions or until we are invited to give a speech on
Einstein's theory to people who don't understand Newtonian mechanics, but we never are invited to give an attack on faith healing, or on astrology -- on
what is the scientific view of astrology today.

I think that we must mainly write some articles. Now what would happen? The person who believes in astrology will have to learn some astronomy. The
person who believes in faith healing might have to learn some medicine, because of the arguments going back and forth; and some biology. In other
words, it will be necessary that science become relevant.

[...]

And then we have this terrible struggle to try to explain things to people who have no reason to want to know. But if they want to defend their own
point of view, they will have to learn what yours is a little bit. So I suggest, maybe incorrectly and perhaps wrongly, that we are too polite. There
was in the past an era of conversation on these matters. It was felt by the church that Galileo's views attacked the church. It is not felt by the
church today that the scientific views attack the church. Nobody is worrying about it. Nobody attacks; I mean, nobody writes trying to explain the
inconsistencies between the theological views and the scientific views held by different people today-or even the inconsistencies sometimes held by the
same scientist between his religious and scientific beliefs.

A scientist is never certain. We all know that. We know that all our statements are approximate statements with different degrees of certainty; that
when a statement is made, the question is not whether it is true or false but rather how likely it is to be true or false. 'Does God exist?' When put
in the questional form, 'how likely is it?' It makes such a terrifying transformation of the religious point of view, and that is why the religious
point of view is unscientific. We must discuss each question within the uncertainties that are allowed.

[...]

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a
question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified -- how can you live and not know? It is not odd at
all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don't know what it is all
about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.

Feynman concludes by doing what he does best, bridging science and philosophy to expand the specific question into a broader meditation on human existence:

So today we are not very well off, we don't see that we have done too well. Men, philosophers of all ages, have tried to find the secret of existence,
the meaning of it all. Because if they could find the real meaning of life, then all this human effort, all this wonderful potentiality of human
beings, could then be moved in the correct direction and we would march forward with great success. So therefore we tried these different ideas. But
the question of the meaning of the whole world, of life, and of human beings, and so on, has been answered very many times by very many people.
Unfortunately all the answers are different; and the people with one answer look with horror at the actions and behavior of the people with another
answer. Horror, because they see the terrible things that are done; the way man is being pushed into a blind alley by this rigid view of the meaning of
the world. In fact, it is really perhaps by the fantastic size of the horror that it becomes clear how great are the potentialities of human beings,
and it is possibly this which makes us hope that if we could move things in the right direction, things would be much better. What then is the meaning
of the whole world?

We do not know what the meaning of existence is. We say, as the result of studying all of the views that we have had before, we find that we do not
know the meaning of existence; but in saying that we do not know the meaning of existence, we have probably found the open channel -- if we will allow
only that, as we progress, we leave open opportunities for alternatives, that we do not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute
truth, but remain always uncertain -- [that we] 'hazard it.' The English, who have developed their government in this direction, call it 'muddling
through,' and although a rather silly, stupid sounding thing, it is the most scientific way of progressing. To decide upon the answer is not
scientific. In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar -- ajar only. We are only at the beginning of the development of the
human race; of the development of the human mind, of intelligent life -- we have years and years in the future. It is our responsibility not to give the
answer today as to what it is all about, to drive everybody down in that direction and to say: 'This is a solution to it all.' Because we will be
chained then to the limits of our present imagination. We will only be able to do those things that we think today are the things to do. Whereas, if we
leave always some room for doubt, some room for discussion, and proceed in a way analogous to the sciences, then this difficulty will not arise. I
believe, therefore, that although it is not the case today, that there may some day come a time, I should hope, when it will be fully appreciated that
the power of government should be limited; that governments ought not to be empowered to decide the validity of scientific theories, that that is a
ridiculous thing for them to try to do; that they are not to decide the various descriptions of history or of economic theory or of philosophy. Only in
this way can the real possibilities of the future human race be ultimately developed.

Most Popular

His paranoid style paved the road for Trumpism. Now he fears what’s been unleashed.

Glenn Beck looks like the dad in a Disney movie. He’s earnest, geeky, pink, and slightly bulbous. His idea of salty language is bullcrap.

The atmosphere at Beck’s Mercury Studios, outside Dallas, is similarly soothing, provided you ignore the references to genocide and civilizational collapse. In October, when most commentators considered a Donald Trump presidency a remote possibility, I followed audience members onto the set of The Glenn Beck Program, which airs on Beck’s website, theblaze.com. On the way, we passed through a life-size replica of the Oval Office as it might look if inhabited by a President Beck, complete with a portrait of Ronald Reagan and a large Norman Rockwell print of a Boy Scout.

“Well, you’re just special. You’re American,” remarked my colleague, smirking from across the coffee table. My other Finnish coworkers, from the school in Helsinki where I teach, nodded in agreement. They had just finished critiquing one of my habits, and they could see that I was on the defensive.

I threw my hands up and snapped, “You’re accusing me of being too friendly? Is that really such a bad thing?”

“Well, when I greet a colleague, I keep track,” she retorted, “so I don’t greet them again during the day!” Another chimed in, “That’s the same for me, too!”

Unbelievable, I thought. According to them, I’m too generous with my hellos.

When I told them I would do my best to greet them just once every day, they told me not to change my ways. They said they understood me. But the thing is, now that I’ve viewed myself from their perspective, I’m not sure I want to remain the same. Change isn’t a bad thing. And since moving to Finland two years ago, I’ve kicked a few bad American habits.

Why the ingrained expectation that women should desire to become parents is unhealthy

In 2008, Nebraska decriminalized child abandonment. The move was part of a "safe haven" law designed to address increased rates of infanticide in the state. Like other safe-haven laws, parents in Nebraska who felt unprepared to care for their babies could drop them off in a designated location without fear of arrest and prosecution. But legislators made a major logistical error: They failed to implement an age limitation for dropped-off children.

Within just weeks of the law passing, parents started dropping off their kids. But here's the rub: None of them were infants. A couple of months in, 36 children had been left in state hospitals and police stations. Twenty-two of the children were over 13 years old. A 51-year-old grandmother dropped off a 12-year-old boy. One father dropped off his entire family -- nine children from ages one to 17. Others drove from neighboring states to drop off their children once they heard that they could abandon them without repercussion.

Trinidad has the highest rate of Islamic State recruitment in the Western hemisphere. How did this happen?

This summer, the so-called Islamic State published issue 15 of its online magazine Dabiq. In what has become a standard feature, it ran an interview with an ISIS foreign fighter. “When I was around twenty years old I would come to accept the religion of truth, Islam,” said Abu Sa’d at-Trinidadi, recalling how he had turned away from the Christian faith he was born into.

At-Trinidadi, as his nom de guerre suggests, is from the Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), a country more readily associated with calypso and carnival than the “caliphate.” Asked if he had a message for “the Muslims of Trinidad,” he condemned his co-religionists at home for remaining in “a place where you have no honor and are forced to live in humiliation, subjugated by the disbelievers.” More chillingly, he urged Muslims in T&T to wage jihad against their fellow citizens: “Terrify the disbelievers in their own homes and make their streets run with their blood.”

The same part of the brain that allows us to step into the shoes of others also helps us restrain ourselves.

You’ve likely seen the video before: a stream of kids, confronted with a single, alluring marshmallow. If they can resist eating it for 15 minutes, they’ll get two. Some do. Others cave almost immediately.

This “Marshmallow Test,” first conducted in the 1960s, perfectly illustrates the ongoing war between impulsivity and self-control. The kids have to tamp down their immediate desires and focus on long-term goals—an ability that correlates with their later health, wealth, and academic success, and that is supposedly controlled by the front part of the brain. But a new study by Alexander Soutschek at the University of Zurich suggests that self-control is also influenced by another brain region—and one that casts this ability in a different light.

A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses.

As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions—sights, sounds, textures, tastes—are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Sure, when we stop and think about it—or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion—we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality. Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, but surely our senses give us at least an inkling of what it’s really like.

Should you drink more coffee? Should you take melatonin? Can you train yourself to need less sleep? A physician’s guide to sleep in a stressful age.

During residency, Iworked hospital shifts that could last 36 hours, without sleep, often without breaks of more than a few minutes. Even writing this now, it sounds to me like I’m bragging or laying claim to some fortitude of character. I can’t think of another type of self-injury that might be similarly lauded, except maybe binge drinking. Technically the shifts were 30 hours, the mandatory limit imposed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, but we stayed longer because people kept getting sick. Being a doctor is supposed to be about putting other people’s needs before your own. Our job was to power through.

The shifts usually felt shorter than they were, because they were so hectic. There was always a new patient in the emergency room who needed to be admitted, or a staff member on the eighth floor (which was full of late-stage terminally ill people) who needed me to fill out a death certificate. Sleep deprivation manifested as bouts of anger and despair mixed in with some euphoria, along with other sensations I’ve not had before or since. I remember once sitting with the family of a patient in critical condition, discussing an advance directive—the terms defining what the patient would want done were his heart to stop, which seemed likely to happen at any minute. Would he want to have chest compressions, electrical shocks, a breathing tube? In the middle of this, I had to look straight down at the chart in my lap, because I was laughing. This was the least funny scenario possible. I was experiencing a physical reaction unrelated to anything I knew to be happening in my mind. There is a type of seizure, called a gelastic seizure, during which the seizing person appears to be laughing—but I don’t think that was it. I think it was plain old delirium. It was mortifying, though no one seemed to notice.

“All the world has failed us,” a resident of the Syrian city of Aleppo told the BBC this week, via a WhatsApp audio message. “The city is dying. Rapidly by bombardment, and slowly by hunger and fear of the advance of the Assad regime.”

In recent weeks, the Syrian military, backed by Russian air power and Iran-affiliated militias, has swiftly retaken most of eastern Aleppo, the last major urban stronghold of rebel forces in Syria. Tens of thousands of besieged civilians are struggling to survive and escape the fighting, amid talk of a rebel retreat. One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth, the city of the Silk Road and the Great Mosque, of muwashshah and kibbeh with quince, of the White Helmets and Omran Daqneesh, is poised to fall to Bashar al-Assad and his benefactors in Moscow and Tehran, after a savage four-year stalemate. Syria’s president, who has overseen a war that has left hundreds of thousands of his compatriots dead, will inherit a city robbed of its human potential and reduced to rubble.

Even in big cities like Tokyo, small children take the subway and run errands by themselves. The reason has a lot to do with group dynamics.

It’s a common sight on Japanese mass transit: Children troop through train cars, singly or in small groups, looking for seats.

They wear knee socks, polished patent-leather shoes, and plaid jumpers, with wide-brimmed hats fastened under the chin and train passes pinned to their backpacks. The kids are as young as 6 or 7, on their way to and from school, and there is nary a guardian in sight.

A popular television show called Hajimete no Otsukai, or My First Errand, features children as young as two or three being sent out to do a task for their family. As they tentatively make their way to the greengrocer or bakery, their progress is secretly filmed by a camera crew. The show has been running for more than 25 years.

A recent study shows that people who simply ate more fiber lost about as much weight as those who went on a complicated diet.

By this time of year, many peoples’ best-laid New Year’s Resolutions have died, just seven short weeks after they were born. One reason why it’s difficult to lose weight—the most common resolution—is that dieting is so confusing.

For instance, the American Heart Association's recommended diet is one of the most effective food plans out there. It’s also one of the most complicated. It requires, according to a recent study, “consuming vegetables and fruits; eating whole grains and high-fiber foods; eating fish twice weekly; consuming lean animal and vegetable proteins; reducing intake of sugary beverages; minimizing sugar and sodium intake; and maintaining moderate to no alcohol intake.” On top of that, adherents should derive half of their calories from carbs, a fifth from protein, and the rest from fat—except just 7 percent should be saturated fat. (Perhaps the goal is to keep people busy doing long division so they don't have time to eat food.)